Duke mints more than 4,500 new graduates today

DURHAM -- The ceremony: 10 a.m. Sunday, Duke University’s Wallace Wade Stadium, Durham.

Number of graduates: 4,521, including graduate students and students who wrapped up their studies in September or December.

Main speaker: John T. Chambers, chief executive of Cisco, who spent a year at Duke’s engineering school before pursuing business and law degrees instead.

What he said: Chambers encouraged grads to always look out for friends, family and co-workers, and to never take life too seriously.

“I ended up at my company because of how I treated somebody 10 years before,” Chambers said. “Your friends and family need you most when you’re in trouble, and that’s when you build lasting relationships.”

Those relationships are what keeps one grounded, he said. “Get somebody around you who balances you,” he said. “Get somebody who, when something gets out of kilter, smacks you in the head.”

He said the era of social networking will give graduates a chance to work more closely with their peers than ever before. Worldwide, people spend 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook, he noted, and that’s likely where the next great ideas will sprout.

Chambers also asked the graduates if they liked change. Most raised their hands before he listed changes like finding a new job or breaking up a relationship. “Feeling uncomfortable with change is OK,” he said. “The only constant is change.”

Best advice: “Before you make an important decision, go to the bathroom,” Chambers advised graduates. He said he got that tip from a world leader. He explained what it means: At key meetings, “don’t go in with any stress – prepare well for the next session.”

The weather: Cloudy with a few breaks of sun as the ceremony wrapped up. Duke avoided the threat of rain, which would have meant a shorter ceremony with just one speaker.

The student speaker: Michael Lefevre, a public policy major from Philadelphia. Rather than hear from the class president, Duke invites students to submit speeches, and a committee of students, professors, administrators and alumni pick the speaker.

What Lefevre said: Duke students are a close-knit bunch. Lefevre said he discovered that in an improvisational acting class.

He’d been assigned to create a flash mob – a seemingly random, but carefully planned, gathering of people doing something odd. He followed a random student off a bus, and his classmates were to fall in line behind them. After crossing campus, he turned around.

“The line was now 30, but there were only 22 people in the class,” Lefevre said. “Here was a line, and they weren’t about to lose their spot in it.”

Joke most likely to make Duke leaders cringe: Lefevre briefly mentioned Duke’s recent appearances in national news, which included a student’s PowerPoint presentation about her sexual exploits at the school.

Lefevre said Duke students will always fill a void, whether it be an empty bulletin board on campus or a more important need. “And if there’s a void in the national media, well, we’re good at filling that void, too,” he said.

Shout-outs: The crowd of family and friends proved they can fill voids too – anytime there was a pause in the proceedings, someone took advantage of the silence to yell out the name of their grad.

Most enthusiastic: Graduates of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, who celebrated their degrees by breaking out a beach ball and air horn during the ceremony.

Best excuse for skipping: Duke Divinity School graduates. Most of them couldn’t attend because they were already out serving a church.

Check back later today to view a photo gallery from the commencement ceremony.